


Listening ever but not catching

by Adazzle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bisexuality, Divorce, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, F/F, Miscarriage, Post-Canon, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:27:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28818528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adazzle/pseuds/Adazzle
Summary: Daphne Greengrass had always cared about what other people thought of her.Title from Christina Rosetti's Goblin Men
Relationships: Daphne Greengrass/Pansy Parkinson
Kudos: 9





	Listening ever but not catching

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory note: trans rights! You are welcome here no matter your identity or orientation. 
> 
> Second obligatory note: I don’t own content

Daphne had done everything she was supposed to do, after the war.

She went to the re-education classes and the educational outings around Muggle London. She kept up Ballet, only now some of her performances were based on Muggle works, and she went to the balls and the meetings and talked about the Greengrasses supporting new pro-Muggle reforms while simultaneously ignoring the subtle digs her parents made about Squibs or Muggleborns at dinner.

She stuffed all of her emotions into a part of her heart that she didn't look at.

When a French Quiddich player asked her out after she danced at a Winbourne Wasps charity fundraiser, she ran through the mental checklist her parents told her about (attractive, half-blood, reasonably wealthy, politically liberal but not progressively so) and said yes.

Rahul asked her to marry him two years later. She ran through the same checklist and said yes once more.

After the fights and the crying and the terrible nights and the horrific divorce negotiations, after she'd gotten too thin to dance, after she'd told her parents this had all started after she lost the baby, her parents sided with Rahul. 

Daphne went to sleep in one of Malfoy Manor's spare bedrooms. There were a lot of them. She gave up on trying to convince her parents of anything.

It hurt a lot, to see Astoria. Her beautiful sister, who had decided not to care what anyone thought even if that meant having a baby against healer's advice or having her parents cut off contact after she married a marked and convicted Death Eater, was the sister who would die.

She put on a brave face and played in the gardens with Astoria and Scorpius. Draco saw through her, though.

"Believe me, Daphne, I should know", he told her one night. Astoria had had a bad day and so he had put Scorpius to bed alone and was sitting in the lounge with her until he was sure his son was safely asleep. "It will be hard, but you'll be happier doing what you want to do." Daphne swirled the wine in her glass. "Part of me still wants my parents to be happy with me", she whispered. Draco gave her a sad smile. "Me, too." he said. "But it hurts less now."

A few weeks later, Daphne found the posting for a ballet teacher at a tiny school for Squibs in Milan and applied.

Astoria hugged her and told her that she was proud of her and made her promise to write. "You should travel for me", she said, eyes glimmering with tears. "I know it's a lot to be here, to be together, but I still love you. I just want you to be happy."

If Astoria wouldn't get sick from another climate, if Draco's probation didn't prohibit travel, if her sister wasn't so fixated on raising a child better than her ancestors and helping to heal England, if she hadn't spent so much money on the divorce, she would buy Draco and Astoria a new, purer house in a country where they didn't have history, where no one suggested Astoria had a child with Voldemort, and they could sit by the seaside and drink coffee and teach Scorpius to fish. If, if, if.

She told Astoria she loved her too and put away the ifs and moved to Italy.

A week later, she ran into Pansy Parkinson, who was on her way to a Muggle antiracism seminar. Her name badge said "Guest speaker-life as a recovering racist." Pansy asked her out for coffee and Daphne thought only of curiosity and going back to her new favorite cafe and said yes.

Daphne had been told she had to continue the family line as a child and so she hadn't thought much about who she liked. She'd marry a nice Pureblood (later, half-blood) man and have several nice children. If she had a son, her father would be happy.

When Pansy asked her to marry her, she wrote one invitation back to England. Tori-she wrote in the loose scrawl her parents had tried to keep her from writing in as a child. If you're ok with it, we'd like to have the ceremony in England and the reception here. I want my family to be there.


End file.
